The use of film subtitles to estimate word frequencies

Publication

AuthorsNEW, BORIS OABRYSBAERT, MARC OAVERONIS, JEANOAPALLIER, CHRISTOPHE OA

Year2007

JournalApplied Psycholinguistics

Abstract

We examine the use of film subtitles as an approximation of word frequencies in human interactions. Because subtitle files are widely available on the Internet, they may present a fast and easy way to obtain word frequency measures in language registers other than text writing. We compiled a corpus of 52 million French words, coming from a variety of films. Frequency measures based on this corpus compared well to other spoken and written frequency measures, and explained variance in lexical decision times in addition to what is accounted for by the available French written frequency measures.

LanguageFrench

Stimuli typewords, sentences

Stimuli count52,000,000

Reliabilities

valence (pearson r)

arousal (cronbach alpha)

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The use of film subtitles to estimate word frequencies

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